Part One
Speech Before the Ungathered Assembly
The sun is fixed in permanent awe, today
The light falls as it fell in yesteryears--
Unexplained in its duration. It is the
Present of the world, outside on
The gravel highway,
Where the sunlight sparkles on crushed glass,
The violent riggings of a judgement ignored,
Enacted already . . .
It is we who are moving
Toward truth long sought in blind expression,
The sky of burning embers, the dark memories
Compiled since the time we were on earth.
The earth turns into the shadows of its
Grief-born days, when the face of the sun shone
Through the flesh, making radiant the arm
Of the man approaching the veiled eyes
And cavern of forms, stumbling out of the sky
Toward the hamlet, white church,
The settled green valley.
Men were of less substance than the air--
The heart strained and worked out its tedious
Magic, in the form of imperishable objects,
An amulet around the neck of a ghost-like priest,
Whose face breathed in the sky. And those
Who died in grief, those who suffered the
Wild cruelty of winds that were like harp strings
Tearing at the throat of the salt seas,
Of wild horses on the prairie, running like
It was creation, they suffered
Exaltation in the fire of the spirit
And their temporary human bodies lay as
Metal figurines or alabaster statues,
Trying, in the wretched gaze, in the breath
Of the noble race, to survive the whole
History of the wind--coming fast, now,
As it did, out of time, fast like
Radiant heat from the fixed sun.
History is right before us, like the sequel
In the story of fabulous rare exhaustion,
Pyramids of dust, the night of cooling rains,
Where again we are collapsing, in a
Storm-tossed vessel, in sight of the fiery
Dawn mist, the burning shroud in the capital--
Walking back down the highway
In the middle of the afternoon
With the sky overhead, toward the junction,
The hotel, where the wind blows in the grass,
Toward the gas pumps and store, rising up
Like in a dream . . . Paradox has grown
Bold in the distances of the world, the
Farthest reality of night has without
Complicity of thought sharp galaxies
Of light, to uphold it here and there--
The future is open even to parallel lives.
And soon you will preside
In the living paradise of memory,
Light shimmering on green fields of grass
After a day of troubling rains. It was in
The modern epoch that I learned the style
Of reminiscence. Immediately, as if formed
Out of the atmosphere, the man I speak of
Is walking---he is walking, he just starts up
Already in the scene, always in the same
Scene, coming forward across the city square,
Walking by the trees. Thought is sweet
Confusion, juggling moods is what you do,
And remembrance of a nature so unresolved
that here, in the world where things are made
To scale, where life is so tuned to a
Busy activity, no statement of truth can
Gain a title in the mind.
She said something
Of this type, when she declared all the books
Were dead, driving through the countryside
And its beautiful dying scenery, like an
Autumn long lost in looks she threw across
To the driver of that car--but it was
Her exotic, ghost-like pallor,
Her black and white eyes
That really said to let the music play out
Its heart in the space created here. For though,
The thought of life, rings clear like a beginning;
And by this he could escape the story cold.
He just continues to walk by the great tall
Trees, nourished from underneath, through
The days and nights in the unremitting
Present scene.
The weather is so familiar!
It’s like an encouragement to disband your
Coat and carry it on your shoulder, and stop
Like the little birds picking at invisible
Fruit . . . To be absolutely attentive
Would be to forget what you were doing, as
If nothing haunted the briefest narration,
And signal the flames and magnets in the
White sky overhead, or lean dangerously
Over the table, trembling with emotion,
To see the contents of the book offer up
Its bulging words--and strike a final meaning.
. . . .(to be continued) . . . . .
Edward Williams
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